


Convergence

by througheden



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:40:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/througheden/pseuds/througheden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hotch slips up and Reid is way too good at his job. </p><p>Spoilers for 2x15 and 3x16. Based immediately after the events of 3x16.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Convergence

“ _Sometimes, the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.”_ _-Bryce Courtenay_

* * *

Oftentimes, when you ask someone when they realized they were in love with their partner, they have a Lifetime story of the first time they locked eyes. Love at first sight and all that nonsense. This was not, however, the case with Dr. Spencer Reid and SSA Aaron Hotchner.

They'd always gotten along, of course. They depended on one another, leaned on one another in times of trouble; they trusted each other with their lives— quite literally. And while they both recognized that they cared about one another outside of their working relationship, they ignored it.

Reid, because he feared rejection and valued his position with the BAU far too much to risk losing it. Hotch, because he had a history of hurting those who cared for him and because of the inherent power differential between the two; the last thing he wanted was to make Spencer feel obligated.

So, they ignored it. The penetrating stares, the open dialogue, the hesitant touches and subtle gestures of solidarity; they tried to brush them all off. And it was beginning to frustrate the team to no end.

Hiding your emotions around the nation's best behavioral analysts was a losing battle, and the BAU didn't even know why they tried. It was painfully obvious that the two agents were into each other-- well, obvious to everyone but one another, of course. 

Spencer didn't appreciate people crowding into his personal space, but when Hotch leaned over him or read over his shoulder or laid a gentle hand on the young man's shoulder, he never flinched. Hotch didn't take kindly to babbling during a case, but if Reid launched into an explanation of thermodynamics at a murder scene, he listened. They smiled around one another, they supported each other, hell, Morgan had seen Hotch bring Reid coffee on more than one occasion.

Hotch brought _no one_ coffee.

Eventually, the team knew it would bubble up to the surface. And, knowing both of those two, it wouldn't be under the best of circumstances. As was typical of the BAU, they were right.

* * *

“ _What were you thinking?”_

_"I was thinking that that would've been the second time a kid died in front of me."_

_"You're keeping score, just like Owen."_

_"It was my turn to save one."_

_"It doesn't work like that."_

_"It should."_

_"I know it's painful when the person you identify with is the bad guy."_

_"What's that make me?"_

_"Good at the job..."_

* * *

When the jet landed, the team went their separate ways for the evening, only to reconvene the following day at the BAU. There was paperwork to complete and cases to sort through. They'd been pouring over folders for a few hours after Hotch excused himself to his office with a brusque nod to his team. The previous day's events had left Hotch disconcerted and he didn't particularly want any company besides his thoughts.

Very few things shook Hotch's stony disposition, but watching an unarmed Dr. Reid approach a mentally unstable teenager wielding an M4 was the equivalent of an earthquake in his life. He'd scolded Reid on the jet as his supervisor, but was yet to talk to him as a friend— as someone that he cared for beyond the confines of a work relationship.

Hotch had known for some time now, long before Haley's divorce petition, that he felt something for the young doctor; something more than admiration and more than respect. It was something far more... inappropriate. The way Reid's face brightened when he made a breakthrough on a case, his quirks and his wit, the way he smiled nearly every day despite his life giving him every reason not to; Reid's strength in the face of adversity had been a kind of crutch for Hotch recently. It was admirable and, while it certainly made him a wonderful agent, it made him an even better individual. He wanted—no, needed—Reid to understand that he cared about him beyond being his subordinate. 

He sat in his office, absentmindedly sifting through stacks of unfinished paperwork. It seemed easy enough. After all, he spoke to Rossi as a friend, Prentiss as a friend, JJ as a friend. Here was an SSA who’d seen the worst humanity had to offer and never flinched, but was anxious about speaking to a colleague. 

If he was being honest with himself, though, he simply wasn't sure how to word his thoughts without his emotions bleeding into them. It was difficult enough to manage the perceptions of a behavioral analyst, but when dealing with a behavioral analyst with an IQ of 187 and fantastically attuned observational skills, it was damn near impossible.

“ _You could have been killed?"_ He'd already said that.  


“ _What would we do without you?"_ No, too informal.

 _I've already lost Haley, don't make me lose you, too?”_  Too personal. Accurate, yes... but far too impersonal.  


Hotch sat at his desk, trying out a string of different opening statements. He was on attempt #16 when there was a light knock on his door.

“Come in,” he answered, carelessly shuffling papers around his desk.

“Sorry to intrude, sir, I just wanted to let you know that my paperwork is finished and I’m gonna head out to…finish that movie,” Reid said, leaning gingerly against the door jam.

“Oh good, good. But... before you go, do you have a minute?” Hotch worked very well under pressure so perhaps just letting the words flow in the moment would work better than rehearsing them. Besides, Reid would certainly recognize anything previously practiced.

“Uh, sure. Is everything okay?” Reid asked, taking a seat across from his supervisor.

“Everything's fine, I just wanted to talk to you for a second.”

“I doubt that everything's fine, sir, you've re-straightened that stack of papers three times since I entered the room.”

Sometimes Hotch wished that Reid was so damn good at his job.

He sighed before continuing.

“Reid, what you did with Owen...”

“I know, I know, Hotch, it was stupid. But he was disturbed and confused and scared and I wasn't going to let anyone gun him down when I knew I could talk him down.” Reid replied, words spewing rapid fire.

“No, no I- I get that. But you need to understand why I was so concerned.”

“You already told me, Hotch—“

“Reid, please. Just listen.” 

He bit back whatever he was about to say and sat silently, leveling Hotch’s stare. 

“You scared the hell out of me yesterday, Reid. I understand why you did it and your intentions were admirable and I respect where you came from, but… all I could see was Owen blowing a baseball size hole in your chest right in front of me. You blocked our shot and we couldn’t see what was happening. I've already seen you die once and the thought of seeing it again... it scared the hell out of me,” Hotch began, his lips pursed and eyebrows drawn together. 

Reid flinched unconsciously at the mention of his near-death experience with Hankel, but immediately tried to cover it.

“Well, actually, based on the power of an M4 and the distance between myself and the weapon, any hole in my chest would be approximately the size of—“ 

“Reid, I really don’t want to think about that, please.” Hotch averted his eyes, glancing down at the report he hadn’t realized he was grasping. 

“Oh,” Reid began, a bit apologetic as he spoke. “I didn’t realize that I actually scared you… I'm sorry. I don’t regret what I did, but I never meant to compromise the team.”

Hotch attempted to smooth out the wrinkles in the report he clutched as he replied. 

“I know, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about the team right now. I’m talking about you. I don’t think you realize how important you are here.”

“Of course I do, the unit wouldn’t be the same if any one of us were gone. Group dynamics are vital to the functioning of high level law enforcement units—“

“I don’t mean important to the BAU, Spencer. I mean important to me,” Hotch bit out, his head snapping up to level the young genius’ shocked expression.

He’d never called Dr. Reid by his first name before and the second it came out of his mouth, he knew he was caught. Maybe he _should_ have planned a bit more. 

“You’ve never called me Spencer before…” Reid noted quietly, speaking mainly to himself. Suddenly, Hotch saw that light bulb expression as he put the puzzle pieces together. 

It hit Reid like a tractor trailer. The small, almost imperceptible smiles. The open dialogue. Hotch’s expression when they found Reid in that graveyard, and then the way Hotch clung to him when he flung himself into his arms. The subtle touches, the light hand at his back when he stopped Owen, the constant reassurance and understanding. 

_He brought him coffee._

His sudden epiphany left him speechless. If he weren’t so shocked—so strangely exhilarated—he would have questioned his abilities as a profiler because the signs were suddenly so obvious. 

Agent Hotchner _liked him._

Oh God... He liked him _back_. 

The silence in the room was deafening as Reid attempted to sort through the jumbled mosaic of thoughts. Reid had known for some time that the way he felt about his supervisor wasn’t appropriate. He knew it wasn’t acceptable to think of Hotch while he completed his paperwork, or even more more so, when he was alone in his bed at night. He shouldn’t have been so attracted to the way Hotch carried his weapon, or the way he hardly had to use it. His passion for his job, for his team, for the well-being of others was so incredibly attractive to the young doctor and, up until that moment, he knew it was fruitless. 

To Reid, Hotch was the curved function to his asymptote. In mathematics, a curved function and its asymptote exist on the same plane. They grow closer and closer together as they extend towards a singularity, but they never converge. They just become tantalizingly, agonizingly closer for infinity. For years, this was how he’d imagined them—growing ever closer, but never meeting. Here was his opportunity to challenge mathematics. 

When he looked up, Hotch was still staring at him, obviously unnerved. Had he upset him? Had he gone too far? 

Reid reached his hand across the desk to where Hotch’s was subconsciously clutching his pen. 

“Blue ink is notoriously difficult to wash off of skin, so you may want to put the pen down. It’s dangerously close to snapping,” he said, nearly a whisper. Hotch looked down to where Reid’s hand was covering his own. He dropped the pen and turned his hand over to grasp Reid’s fingers. 

“I take it you figured me out?” Hotch muttered, glancing out the window of his office to be sure they were alone. 

“Did you really think you’d be able to manage your perceptions with me?” 

“Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want to… look, Reid, we can’t pursue this, you know that, right?” 

Reid’s grin was unlike any other Hotch had seen before. A mixture of rebellion and desire. He'd be lying if he said he didn't find it attractive.

“Why? We both know we’re very capable of compartmentalizing, and I have great faith in our ability to hide our personal lives.”

“Reid, it’d be dangerous. If we were ever caught—“ 

“We won’t be. Hotch, you just said yourself that the sight of Owen’s M4 pointed at my chest terrified you. Granted, I put myself in that situation, but this is a dangerous life. One day, I may be in that situation again without such a favorable outcome. There are other Tobias Hankels out there, and other Owens. Either one of us could be killed on any case. Frankly, I’m not willing to let a chance at happiness slide through my fingers without knowing what could happen. Is that a risk you’re willing to take?” 

No, it wasn’t. He’d watched too many of his colleagues die with too many unanswered questions. If something ever happened to the young man whose fingers now rest in his palm, his world would shatter. And he knew it. 

“No. It’s not,” he finally replied aloud. 

“Well, good.” Reid replied. “So… what do we do now?”

Hotch wished he knew. “I’ve never done this before, Reid, so I’m not sure.”

Reid glanced down at his watch and checked the time. “Well, the… movie… already started so it looks like I’m free right now. Want some help with the paperwork?” 

He couldn’t keep the smile from blossoming across his face. Hotch let go of Reid’s hand and pushed a pile of folders across the desk. 

“A true BAU first date,” Hotch joked, evaluating Reid’s face at his mention of the word date. The only facial change he noted was a cheeky grin. He could get used to seeing that grin more often. 

“Well, nothing sets the mood quite like assessing the psychological basis for strangulation,” Reid retorted breezing through an entire folder in under a minute. 

As Reid went into an explanation of the hyoid bone and the problems with using it to assess manual strangulation in victims (“Contrary to popular belief, the hyoid bone is actually only fractured in approximately 1/3 of manual strangulation cases and because the hyoid is often un-fused in younger victims, it can be difficult to identify strangulation as a cause of death based solely on the condition of the hyoid”), Hotch couldn’t help but smile. One chance circumstance, one slight slip of the tongue, and his entire world shifted in a new direction. 

Maybe it was a good thing he hadn’t planned after all.

* * *

 

Downstairs in the bright tech room, Garcia had rallied the troops to watch the camera both Hotch and Reid forgot was positioned directly outside of Hotch’s office. 

“Fuckin’ finally!” Morgan exclaimed, leaning over between Garcia and JJ’s shoulders. 

“Pay up, Rossi,” Prentiss called, holding out her right hand. 

“No, no, this doesn’t count as a first date. A first date has pasta and music and—“ 

“This is the FBI, doing paperwork together is as good a date as anyone gets around here. Don’t be a sore loser,” she replied, smiling as Dave huffed and deposited a crisp $20 bill into her hand. 

“You know they’ll kill us if they find out we saw this, right?” JJ said, turning to Morgan. “That means you, Derek, no jokes, alright?” 

“Hey hey, I don’t joke about love. As long as they’re happy, I’m happy. And maybe now Hotch won’t look so damn miserable all the time,” Morgan laughed.

The team celebrated in secret, discussing possible new betting pools. But, beneath the jokes and the laughter was a profound joy for the two agents. They knew the risks that FBI agents were forced to take every day and they knew how important it was to balance out the horrors they faced. Day after day, night after night, they each went home without a sense of security or stability. After all, it was difficult to find that security for yourself when you were supposed to be the ones providing it. Reid and Hotch managed to find that security and that light needed to illuminate the shadows that followed them within one another and they were happy for them. Truly, genuinely happy.  


* * *

“ _Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience._ ” _\- Albert Camus_


End file.
